Could Madrid Be the Next Miami? At Arco Fair, ‘Slow-Burn’ Sales but Big Dreams

Arco Madrid, which is billed as the leading art fair in the Spanish-speaking world, has returned for its 43rd edition this week in Spain’s capital. Sales have been slow but steady during the first two professional days, on Wednesday and Thursday, according to exhibitors and industry insiders at the IFEMA Madrid, but that has not deterred some from proposing that the city could play an even more ambitious role in the international art market.

Could Madrid be the next Miami?

Judged by its scale and the number of accompanying VIP events, Arco Madrid is much more modest than Art Basel Miami Beach. However, with an increasing number of affluent Latin American collectors making the city their home here, thanks to an investor-visa scheme, it may not be an overstatement to compare the two. Some have reported choosing Madrid over Miami, and prices for its housing properties have been on the rise.

To art dealers, Madrid certainly has its charm. For example, Jocelyn Wolff, of the eponymous Paris gallery, has cast his vote for the city and its flagship fair, skipping Miami fairs last year in favor of Arco.

“I did [Art Basel Miami Beach] almost 15 years in a row and I stopped because I felt it was totally overpriced,” said Wolff, who has brought to Arco material by a range of gallery artists from Latin America and Europe, such as Francisco Tropa from Lisbon. Works were priced between €9,500 and €180,000 ($10,400–$197,000).

Wolff reported some sales on opening day but admitted that they are not comparable to the ones might have early at other fairs. “It’s not really a selling fair,” he said. “It’s more like a contact fair. It’s a very specific spectrum [of clients], a good fair to work on this relationship between Europe and Latin America.” In Madrid, he has a higher chance of meeting collectors who have serious attitude about art than in Miami, and “it’s much more interesting to spend a week in Madrid,” he added.

Victoria Gelfand-Magalhaes, senior partner for Europe at Lévy Gorvy Dayan, said that a key reason that the gallery is participating is the increasing number of Latin American clients it has in Madrid from places like Venezuela, Brazil, and Colombia. The gallery has brought works by artists with connections to Latin America, such as the estate of Gego, the German-Venezuelan artist. “It’s a slow-burn fair, but people we have met here are more serious,” she said. “It’s not like Miami. It feels like there’s a Spanish Renaissance.”

This year, the fair has a total of 205 galleries from 36 countries, about the same as last year’s 211. More than 35 percent, or 73, of the exhibitors are Spanish, and 38 are from Latin America. A total of 171 galleries appear in the fair’s main sector, while a curated sector, “The shore, the tide, the current: an Oceanic Caribbean,” features 19 with ties to the Caribbean. An area for young international galleries has 15 participants, a section called “Never the Same: Latin American Art” has 12, and 28 artists are doing special “Artist Projects,” via by 32 galleries. (Some galleries are exhibiting in more than one sector.)

Maribel López, Arco’s director, said that a change in the dates of the fair in order to facilitate a longer installation period may have presented a problem for a small number of galleries, since TEFAF is also running this week in Maastricht, the Netherlands. However, Arco had 80 more applicants this year, and the fair had to turn down some of them in order to maintain its exhibitor number at around 200.

The fair has also tried to keep costs under control, in light of economic uncertainties, López noted. For the main section, the fee per square meter (about 10 square feet) was raised by €10 ($11) from last year to €330 ($361). Galleries under five years old pay €6,500 ($7,100) for a whole booth, and exhibitors wanting a backroom pay an extra €3,500 ($3,830).

One of the fair’s strengths is its VIP program, according to exhibitors. This year, the fair has invited 350 international VIPs, including private and institutional collectors, art advisors, and 160 curators. “It’s a program we started in the 1990s,” López said. “In fact, some of them are now living in Madrid. It is the new Miami,”

It was not hard to spot collectors and industry players enjoying themselves throughout a week of events, private dinners, and receptions hosted by several foreign embassies in Spain. The Brussels-based Alain Servais was seen mingling with art world professionals and cycling around the city at night. Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, the Cuban-born and Venezuela-raised philanthropist who has called Madrid home since she bought her first property here nearly two decades ago, invited insiders to take a peek at her private collection this week ahead of the launch of her autobiographical novel, Ella soy yo, this weekend.

Jaime Martinez, formerly the director of Bogotá’s Foro Space gallery, which exhibited at Arco last year, is now attending as the new head of the Artbo fair (International Art Fair of Bogotá) in the Colombian capital. “Arco plays a pivotal role in bridging the gap between the European and Latin American art markets,” Martinez said. “It serves as a crucial platform for showcasing contemporary art from both Europe and Latin America. And, well, Madrid is such a fun place to be.”

Buenos Aires pharmaceutical businessman Juan Vergez and his wife Patricia Pearson-Vergez also hosted private visits to their collection space in the city center. Their 26-year-old son, Francisco Vergez, who last year left his business-development job to pursue a career in artist management and art advising, is confident in the future of Arco. “The art market fluctuates, but Arco is on its way to grow,” he said. “There’s no coincidence that there were six dinners on Monday night. It’s like a small [Art] Basel.”

The mega Italian collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo has an even bigger presence in Madrid than in the past. Her Fundación Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Madrid has staged an elaborate, poetic exhibition, “When the Lambs Rise Up Against the Bird of Prey” by artist Precious Okoyomon, at the historic Montaña de los gatos in El Retiro Park. It is the artist’s first solo show in Spain, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, the globetrotting artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London. Fondazione Arte CRT, the Turin-headquartered foundation that she serves as president, made its first acquisition at Arco, TBC, a painting by Tomás Saraceno and a set of 15 drawings by Abraham Gonzalez Pacheco for a total of €36,000 ($39,400). The works will go on long-term loan to the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Torino.

The price points at Arco are lower than at other top-tier fairs, with most works material priced under €100,000 ($109,500). Reported sales included a €95,000 ($104,000) mixed-media triptych featuring A.I. generated images titled Sunday Union by the Brussels- and Krakow-based Polish artist Marcin Dudek, sold by Brussels gallery Harlan Levey Projects to a U.S. private collection. The gallery also sold a few other small works priced around €3,000 ($3,300). Swiss gallery Livie, which takes the whole booth for the first time at the fair instead of sharing with another gallery, sold several works including landscape painting Baby pond by Dimitra Charamandas for €10,500 ($11,478).

On hand for the first time, 193 Gallery, of Paris and Venice, sold walled works by the artist Adler Guerrier in the region of €12,000 ($13,400). Berlin’s Capitain Petzel sold works priced between €5,000 to €250,000 ($5,500–$274,000). Bologna-based gallery P420 sold five paintings from its solo presentation of the Glasgow-based Welsh-born artist Merlin James priced at €10,000 to €30,000 ($10,931 to $32,795) to Spanish and international collectors. Madrid’s Guillermo De Osma, which has a €2.5 million ($2.7 million) Picasso painting on show, sold several figurative, surrealist paintings priced from €2,000 ($2,186) to €5,000 ($5,466) by Spanish artist Dis Berlin (b. 1959). His biggest collectors include the Oscar-winning Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, who has featured Berlin’s works in his films. The Picasso painting had yet to find a home as of Thursday afternoon.

Unlike many other prominent fairs, the range of work on offer extends well beyond paintings. There is no lack of conceptual, and even politically-charged works, from the Latin American world as well as Europe. Frankfurt’s Galerie Anita Beckers has brought German artist Jonas Englert back to Arco this year with the politically-charged video installation Circles I (€26,000/$28,425), which features archival footage of 20th-century world leaders shaking hands and giving other bodily touches. Also on show there is Abacus, by Spanish artist Daniel Canogar, a video installation that pulls real-time stock market data that it transforms into threads that are woven into a digital tapestry onscreen.

Vigil Gonzales (of Buenos Aires and Cusco, Perú) presents Puerto Rican artist Karlo Andrei Ibarra in the curated Caribbean sector. His photographic works series Mano brújula I, II, and III (2024, $3,500 each) addresses the limbo state of the island due to its fraught connection with the U.S. The gallery, which is participating in the fair for the first time, after taking part in Arco’s online edition during the pandemic, says it has nearly sold out its booth, where works range from €3,000 to €10,000 ($3,300–$10,900) in the fair’s Latin American sector.

“This is our gateway to Europe,” said Ari Gonzales-Vigil. “It’s a very friendly environment for Latin American galleries. This is a huge step for us and we feel cared for. The curators of our sector kept bringing people to us. This has given us huge incentive to come back next year.”

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